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Title: The Country Under My Skin : A Memoir of Love and War by Gioconda Belli, Kristina Cordero ISBN: 0-375-40370-1 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 05 November, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (6 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Well told story of Dona Quixote of Nicaragua
Comment: I was reminded while reading COUNTRY by Belli of a passage early in Rebecca West's BLACK LAMB AND GREY FALCON in which she writes that men suffer from lunacy of being too much of the world, and women suffer from being too local, too involved in their own personal lives. Belli does not suffer either, but rather finds a balance in her narration between the concerns of her worldly life with the concerns of her personal life. She recounts in similar voice the dramas of her involvement with the Sandinistas and her rise in the eventual government the rebel group achieved and the complications of her personal life as her first marriage and then her second crumbled.
She writes about herself as a Doña Quixote, seeking to make the world a better place, and having her own adventures, and the titles of each chapter charmingly advance this thematic idea, having a similar style to Cervantes' work (which I am reading now). For example, chapter 22 is titled, "On the hectic preparations for the attacks and on how I was unexpectedly called to perform a dangerous mission." Belli gives a compelling account in these chapters of the egregious human rights violations of the Somoza dictatorship that the Sandinistas sought to overthrow. The reader is walked through her early life, the daily life of a privileged Nicaraguan who felt a moral imperative to make a change in the government of her country. She also recounts her feelings about the Reagan administration's support of the Contras who sought to overthrow the Sandinista government. The actions of the United States, according to Belli in COUNTRY, were illustrative of why the United States is not universally beloved. This empire had a personal and profound impact on the author, who now lives in the United States part of the time with her third husband.
Belli is an accomplished poet and writer, and it shows in her work. She draws the picture of her life clearly and vividly, not falling prey to the "telling not showing" disease many nonwriters have when they seek to illustrate their own lives.
Belli writes with heartbreak of how the Sandinistas lost the election soon after they effected the end of the Somoza regime, but it is touching and shows the lasting legacy of the Sandinista revolution: It gave Nicaraguans the right to vote for their own leaders.
Rating: 5
Summary: Awe Inspiring!!
Comment: Gioconda Belli's most recent book may be the best memoir I have ever read. It is the beautiful and inspiring story of an amazing woman - a woman who dared to defy what convention expected of her -- in order to help topple a murderous dictator. It is also the gripping story of a historical decade in Central America and in the world, told from a distinctly female point of view. And last but not least, it is the awesome story of a life that has been anything but self-indulgent, one that speaks (in Ms. Belli's words) "of the joy that comes from surrendering the "I" and embracing the "we." This book reads like an epic poem: it is filled with love and war, passions and dreams, the personal and the political. This is a truly awe-inspiring memoir, and I highly recommend it.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Political Made Personal
Comment: Belli's extraordinary memoir brings intimacy, emotional sensitivity, and depth to the story of Nicaragua's revolution. Whether she is giving birth in a squalid clinic, exiled from her country, learning to shoot, being dropped from a helicopter - in high heels - or negotiating with Fidel, we never forget she and the other revolutionaries are all people struggling to live, to love, to raise their children, care for their parents, and save their country all at once. Never before have I read a political memoir that told me what I wanted to know about revolution - not just the events and the speeches, the strategies and the fights, but how it felt, how one lived it, what kind of person Fidel was, Ortega, and the rest. Belli tells the tale with all its drama, but doesn't leave out the profoundly complex personal texture.
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Title: My Car in Managua by Forrest D. Colburn ISBN: 0292751249 Publisher: Univ of Texas Press Pub. Date: 1991 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: The Inhabited Woman by Gioconda Belli, Kathleen N. March ISBN: 0446672068 Publisher: Warner Books Pub. Date: October, 1995 List Price(USD): $19.99 |
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Title: From Eve's Rib/Spanish-English by Gioconda Belli, Steven F. White, Margaret Randall ISBN: 1880684136 Publisher: Curbstone Press Pub. Date: September, 1993 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Sandinista: Carlos Fonseca and the Nicaraguan Revolution by Matilde Zimmermann ISBN: 0822325950 Publisher: Duke Univ Pr (Txt) Pub. Date: March, 2001 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Moon Handbooks Nicaragua (Moon Handbooks: Nicaragua, 1st Ed) by Josh Berman, Randy Wood ISBN: 1566914817 Publisher: Avalon Travel Publishing Pub. Date: December, 2002 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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